


Kings Upon The Main

by Dikhotomia



Series: 1000 Prompts Attempt 2: The (Slightly) Unorganized Mess [12]
Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Headcanon galore, Poison, Snapshots, this isn't supposed to make sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 22:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "The cold radiates, burning lungs and misting breath before the sharp wind rips it away. The water churns and fades, draining back from drenched boots. She’s tired, leaning heavily on the hilt of her blade, water dripping off the brim of her hat. She’s cold, teeth grit to suppress the threatening shudder building in her limbs. “You wanted me to come here,” she says, words almost lost on the wind. “Why?”Again. Again. Driven from Dream to Nightmare and back.The water rushes in, churns about her feet, dark and threatening to pull her under into the abyss again."ORThe Tide Rises and Falls, Maria Is Pulled Along With It
Series: 1000 Prompts Attempt 2: The (Slightly) Unorganized Mess [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594495
Kudos: 8





	Kings Upon The Main

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 24 "Waves."
> 
> I have a lot of feelings and headcanon involving Maria and I've dropped about a fraction of it into this.

The cold radiates, burning lungs and misting breath before the sharp wind rips it away. The water churns and fades, draining back from drenched boots. She’s tired, leaning heavily on the hilt of her blade, water dripping off the brim of her hat. She’s cold, teeth grit to suppress the threatening shudder building in her limbs. “You wanted me to come here,” she says, words almost lost on the wind. “Why?”

Again. Again. Driven from Dream to Nightmare and back. 

The water rushes in, churns about her feet, dark and threatening to pull her under into the abyss again. 

_Someone will come._ The entity whispers, extending inhuman claws. The words brush against the inside of her skull like ice, dragging went and freezing until pain sparks in the undercurrent. She lifts a hand and presses it to her face, staring wide eyed and shocked at the water still rushing past her feet. 

More. More. Until she stands on the lake outside Byrgenwerth the moon impossibly bright and close, becoming nothing but a burning reflection on the glass like surface of the water.

“Lady Maria?”

She blinks, sucking in a breath and turning. “Yes?” she asks, swallowing down the cold knot of shock and of wild wonder at the hallucination she just bore witness to. 

“You look as though you saw a ghost,” Adeline murmurs, reaching out to rest a hand against her bicep. “In fact you look almost sick, are you feeling alright?”

There is no way to explain what she has seen, no way to attempt to put into words the task she was presented with, brows knitting together. “I cannot be sure,” she replies, honest, low. “The water spoke to me.”

Adeline pauses, Maria looks away, staring back out the window. 

All she could do now was wait.

\------

"Did we do the right thing?"

She's back on the shore, waves crashing against rocks and hissing up over gravel and sand. She's away from it all, watching from the mouth of the cave, Gerhman at her side. Two lay dead on the shore, inhuman bodies pushed and pulled by the churning water. Pale white and screaming, twisted bones stretching up from jutting ribs.

_Did you do the right thing--?_

The water churns in her mind, filling the edges of her skull like a cup threatening to overflow. Her blade falls from between numbing fingers, clattering sharply against the stone, palms and fingers pressing and pulling against her temples and her face. Again. Again. Again.

There's no Gerhman, there's no shore. There's only water, Kos writhing above and around her, dragging her down into the depths of the raging ocean. Maria thrashes against it, clawing and digging at cold tendrils, kicking out at the ethereal body bobbing above her.

_The chosen. My children. My son._

_Someone will come--_

She screams, muffled and suffocating, water pouring down her throat and into her lungs.

_All of them gone--_

\-----

Maria wakes to hands on her, fisting into the collar of her coat and shaking, a whispered voice desperately trying to gain her attention. Her focus. Blindly she lashes out, fist glancing off a shoulder. The nightmare clings to her, leaving her hyperventilating and warring with the blur of emotions all warring for dominance.

"Lady Maria, please, listen to me!" Adeline shifts fully into her line of focus, pale fingers pressing to her cheeks and forcing her to look at her. "You're alright, it was just a nightmare." 

She wasn't alright, she hasn't been alright in years.

\------

"You shouldn't leave."

Maria's attention shifts, roaming along the opulent room to the woman sitting at the head of it, cheek pressed to her fist. The Vileblood Queen in all her usual glory looks concerned, if not saddened at the idea of one of her own leaving the coop. Especially to go where Maria has decided to go.

"If none of us ever leave, we will never be able to convince outsiders to see us as anything other than they do; _Vilebloods_." A fool's errand, she knew. Yharnam was isolationist on the best of days and xenophobic on the worst. Yet when she stepped back and looked at it, Cainhurst was no better. Two places isolated up in the mountains, as close as neighbors but as far away as countries. Her lip quirks in a smirk she hides from the Queen's line of sight, canting her head low enough the visor of her hat obscures her face.

Fear. On both sides.

Fear would lead to hostility.

Hostility to--

"We worry for you, Maria. They will not welcome you."

Her eyes lift, expression thinning to something as coldly neutral as she could manage. "Just as we welcome them?" She asks, one of the few who dared to question. "Our two sides meet one another in the middle with blades and insults instead of attempts at negotiation. Pray tell me how that will end well for either of us?"

She knows the answer; it won't.

"It will end worse for Yharnam than it will us," the Queen murmurs, pretty chin propped against slender fingers. "Do you think us so weak?"

"No," Maria replies, crossing her arms. "I simply wish to avoid a conflict, there is enough to deal with."

_If only--_

\------

The rain sings and Maria finds herself stopping to listen to it's ever changing cadence, stilling underneath a shop's awning. She's never heard it like this before, so used to the toneless hiss of it hitting cobblestone and wood. 

She wonders what it was that caused the change, wonders what it was she did differently to become so in tune with water. It spoke and now it sings, lulling her into a calm she refuses to sink entirely in to, back pressing to the stone of the building she still stands under for cover.

But she does find herself humming along to it, her voice a low drone accompanying the melodic whisper.

The tune sticks with her long after, catching herself unintentionally humming under her breath as she works or while she reads; pausing on the arch of a nonsensical swirl of her quill.

"Troublesome..." she mutters, ignoring the looks aimed in her direction.

\-----

Her goblet rings against the floor, bouncing once across the wood, it's contents spilling a deeper red in contrast to the blood that she chokes on. Two shades, dark and light, clashing violently across the muddied brown of the floor beneath her feet. 

Behind her the clock gears churn, creaking a melody of death.

"Poison?" she rasps, gasping between coughs and the burning agony that lights her nerves like the fire she swore of wielding. "Who...?" How? She had a dozen questions and no time to answer any of them, lungs seizing as much as muscles do. Her vision swims, the taste of copper making itself at home once again on her tongue as blood rises like bile in the back of her throat. 

_Thump._

Her eyes lift, hand clutching her throat in a useless attempt to ease the agony. 

_Thump._

Two figures, the race of her own heart.

"You--" She hisses, baring reddened teeth. 

It all connects in a wild, rapid fire flash. The wine that had been delivered for the doctors working in the lab, a supposed 'peace offering' from the church in an attempt to build a proper bridge between the two factions. Except, it wasn't a peace offering as she was finding out, choking to death on her own blood. 

It was a tool of murder.

"Gerhman's pupil is proving as hard to kill as we feared," one of the figures murmurs, hood and mask obscuring features. "I suppose we may have to help her along."

Why? She wants to ask, why kill her? Was it because of her connection to Oberon? Her ability to hear him speak through the water? The formless' words gracing her and not the ones that worshiped him. Was it because of Byrgenwerths sins? The experiments she had sat back and watched being done?

Her teeth grit, rage catching spark, fueled into an inferno by the pain. 

"Try it," she snarls, shoving herself off the floor. "I shall bring you to the Nightmare with me."

Chaos explodes as Maria pushes her failing body into a whirlwind of violence, her fist impacting with the nearest hunter's face, mask buckling underneath the force. She doesn't stop, blinded by her pain and failing consciousness. Blood splashes her face, gloves glistening with it from where she continues to swing. 

She howls, voice breaking around a horrific gurgling wheeze--- 

_The water pulls her under, cradling her in a refreshing embrace, Kos once again looming over her. Murmuring, murmuring just as Oberon does._

_'Someone is coming--'_

Darkness. Nothingness.

\------

_The water flows around you, churning and pushing your body about and leaving you feeling helpless and disorientated. Your limbs thrash against the waves that hold you under. You don't recall how you ended up here, thrashing around, unable to break the surface of the water. You don't remember the moments that lead up to the situation you're in now._

_All there is is water, water and darkness, bubbles floating past you like a million stars._

What do I do? _You think, lungs burning for air. You can let yourself drown, hope that you come back at the nearest lamp or awaken in the Dream. But you're unsure in this moment, unsure of where you'll end up when the darkness inevitably closes in--_

_A hand breaks through the water, reaching for you, grasping at your coat and pulling you up. Up. Up--_

_Your face breaks the water and you cough, gasping desperately for air that chills your throat and your lungs as you breathe. It aches, it aches but soothes the burn, your fingers grasping at the biceps of your savior._

_It's a face you recognize but don't, the brim of her hat masking eyes you've looked into countless times before. The Doll, but not the doll. A hunter whose name you've only heard Gerhman breathe in his nightmares._

_A head lifts, eyes meeting yours and searching your face as a dawning realization creeps across a cold gaze._

"It's you."

**Author's Note:**

> If you've hit the end of this and thought "What the fuck is going on?" I've done my job.
> 
> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos) if you want.


End file.
